Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/45

Rh 'Tis not to us should be addrest Your ghostly exhortation, If heresy still lifts her crest, The fault is in the nation. The State, in spite of all our pains, Has left us in the lurch, The spirit of the times restrains The spirit of the Church. Well warned from what abroad occurs, We keep all tight at home, Nor brush one cobweb from St. Paul's For fear we shake the dome. Church maxims do not greatly vary, Take it upon my honour, Place on the throne another Mary, We'll find another Bonner!

Satire is certainly more diverting than compliment! It has been said that Hannah More's mind afterwards underwent a sudden change or conversion; but, in point of fact, the sisters were always deeply and quietly religious women, and she held the even tenor of her way through all the enjoyments of society, and in the midst of all the whirl of success she was keeping up her habits of religious study. She writes from London: "I have read through all the Epistles three times since I have been here; the ordinary translation, Locke's paraphrase, and a third put into very elegant English, I know not by whom, in which St. Paul's obscurities are elucidated, and Harwood's pomp of words avoided. I am also reading West on the